When running against Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan asked the American people if they were better off than they were four years ago. The phrase perfectly summarized in the most basic terms how democracy often winds up working. When things are going well, you don’t break what is working, but when things are going bad, it [...]

For the first time in his presidency a plurality of the American people think they are better off now than when President Obama took over. According to a new Bloomberg poll: “It’s starting to get better,” says survey respondent Kelsey Simeon, 21, a mechanical-engineering student at California State University, Sacramento, in a follow-up interview. “Strip [...]

Getting Republicans to sign onto a deal could enhance Obama’s personal brand. It would show him to be a serious “deficit hawk,” able to rise above partisan politics and cut a deal. But he would be helping himself at the expense of everyone else in the party. By giving the Republicans the political “out” they want on Medicare privatization, he could be dealing a devastating blow to everyone else in his own party who hoped to use the Ryan vote against their GOP opponents in 2012.